8 Tips To Avoid Outrageous International Mobile Charges [Infographic]

If you have ever been traveling abroad and then got back home to discover an outrageous phone bill with tons of international mobile charges, you will appreciate this article. That’s only happened to me once, and it was when I traveled to Toronto. After that experience, whenever I travel internationally, I always leave my iPhone completely turned off. It’s inconvenient to do that though since then you have to buy calling cards in the country where you’re traveling to in order to contact people back home. When I was in China, I used Skype chat, and that worked well. However, I only used it on my laptop. I didn’t dare turn my iPhone on to use Skype mobile.

The reason for that is because the moment you turn your smartphone on, depending on where you are, you will start accruing international mobile charges that you are most likely unaware of. This is because you most likely have push notifications and other auto-updated services (even email) that may be running in the background without your even realizing it.

I remember a story I read here on MSN a few months ago about the woman in France who received a $15 quadrillion dollar phone bill. Yup, you read that right, that’s a lot of zeros. The thing was, in her case, it wasn’t because of international mobile charges, it was just because the phone company made a mistake. What I took from that article was how much stress and time she wasted on getting it all straightened out. To me, it’s better to do everything possible in order to avoid those kinds of charges in the first place.

In this infographic by xigo called Avoid Outrageous International Mobile Expenses, we are treated to 8 tips for how to circumvent insane international mobile charges (along with a few examples). By just making some small adjustments, you can save yourself a lot of money, time and headaches by not accruing super high international mobile charges when you travel.